[April 07, 2014]

Definiens Sponsors the World Wide Clinical Validation of the Immunoscore

Definiens, the global leader in image analysis for digital pathology and diagnostics, announced today that it has signed an agreement with INSERM Transfert to sponsor the worldwide consortium for the validation of the Immunoscore, a new approach to cancer therapy that has been called "transformational."

A team led by Professor Jérôme Galon, a prominent Immunologist, has demonstrated that the number, type, and location of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes in primary tumors have prognostic value¹. Clinical data shows that patients with a strong Immunoscore have a better prognosis and that immune response may be a better indicator of risk for reoccurrence than standard tumor staining. Definiens has developed the underlying technology, enabling the accurate and reproducible quantification of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes that is essential to the Immunoscore test.

Under an international task force led by the Society of Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) with the partnership of the European Academy of Tumor Immunology (EATI), the Cancer and Inflammation Program (CIP), the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and La Fondazione Melanoma, the Immunoscore is being validated by leading immunologists and pathologists in 15 countries.

According to Pablo Jordan, Executive Vice President of Business Development for Definiens, "The ultimate goal of this international validation effort is to implement the Immunoscore into routine clinical practice as a new component for the classification of cancer, designated TNM-I (TNM-Immune), which will add key and currently missing information that will improve cancer therapeutic choice."

"Definiens is excited to be part of such a large, global effort to validate a new method for classifying cancer," said Thomas Heydler, CEO of Definiens. "The work this global team is doing is groundbreaking and can really lead to better prognosis of cancer patients, ultimately helping to improve patient lives. Also, this agreement strengthens Definiens' strategy to enable innovation in cancer diagnostics and immunotherapy."

About Definiens

Definiens is the leading provider of image analysis solutions and data mining solutions for life science, tissue diagnostics, and clinical digital pathology. Definiens' technology provides detailed biomarker readouts from slide images and enables the correlation of this information with other key clinical or genomic information, an approach known as Tissue Phenomics™. Definiens helps pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, research institutions, clinical service organizations and pathologists to generate new knowledge and support better decisions in research, diagnostics and therapy.

Definiens' vision is to open new fields of research, to contribute to development of personalized medicine, and to significantly improve the quality of patients' lives. Definiens is headquartered in Munich, Germany and has its North American headquarters in Carlsbad, CA (News - Alert). Further information is available at www.definiens.com.

¹ The foundational article was originally published in September 2006 in Science, and titled "Type, density, and location of immune cells within human colorectal tumors predict clinical outcome" (Galon et. al., Science 2006).

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